GENEVA - The World Health Organization on Thursday sought to reassure pharmaceutical companies that a proposal to suspend patent rights on COVID-19 vaccines was not a bid to "snatch" their intellectual property rights.
"Of course, we can’t snatch your property," Tedros said via video link from Tokyo at the start of a meeting with the World Trade Organization, pharma companies and global financial institutions. Waiving intellectual property rights would help meet the 11 billion doses of vaccine the WHO says are needed to protect 70 percent of people in every country by mid-2022.
Of the 1.1 billion doses produced globally in June, "only 1.4 percent went to Africans, who account for 17 percent of the global population", WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweal said in her opening speech.